Justin Chang
speaker
1,638 appearances
51 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 2d ago
Justin Chang’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 28 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 6.
Appearances
Would you supervise me?
Tony's experiment involves attaching electronic sensors to the leaves and trunk of a nearly 200-year-old ginkgo biloba tree and studying the resulting data to see what, if anything, the plant might be trying to communicate.
In a way, this tree is the true protagonist of Silent Friend.
It's the only character old enough to appear in all three timeframes.
In the earliest story, set in 1908, an aspiring botanist named Greta, played by Luna Vedler, becomes the first female student admitted to the university.
As she pursues her studies, she trains to become a photographer and develops a deeper aesthetic appreciation of the flowers, fruits, and vegetables that she often finds herself shooting.
The third story is set in 1972.
A young man named Hannes, played by Enzo Broom, is tasked with looking after his roommate's prized geranium.
In a primitive early version of Tony's 2020 experiment, Hannes finds himself studying and decoding the flower's responses to stimuli.
The film cuts vigorously among these three stories, wrapping them around each other like vines.
There's no danger of getting lost, though, since each era has its own distinct visual style.
Black and white film for the early 20th century, warm, grainy color film for the 70s, and cool, high-def digital for 2020.
Every era, and yet he seems to be saying, has its own technological advancements.
Every era also has its own political pressures.
In all three stories, the university is a place where human progress is both nurtured and threatened.
Toni has to deal with pandemic isolation and paranoid campus staff.
Greta must endure the profound condescension of her all-male professors and peers.
And Hannes finds that even the let-it-all-hangout spirit of the 70s can be unexpectedly stifling.
And yet he loves telling tales about misfits and underdogs, and infuses them with a magical sense of possibility.
In 2017, she directed the Oscar-nominated romance On Body and Soul, about two slaughterhouse workers who start seeing each other in their dreams.
Showing 801–820 of 1,638 · page 41 of 82
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